Blog: Words and images

Then there’s this photo. All it involved was looking out my hotel window at the right time.

I was staying at the Marriott Financial Center (now known as the New York Marriott Downtown) in lower Manhattan and was getting ready to head out for dinner when I looked out the window of my 35th floor room and saw the early winter sunset reflecting nicely in the windows of the World Financial Center across the way.

It’s Sunday, so it’s time for another photo of the week and the story behind the image.

Photographing large birds in flight isn’t extremely difficult. Soaring hawks, ospreys and eagles tend to circle slowly and are large enough to make focusing easy. Same with birds like herons and egrets, who don’t set any speed records flying point to point.

But catching smaller birds in flight is pure luck, from my experience. They are quick and often unpredictable in flight. Plus they are small, which makes focusing on the tiny, unpredictable moving object impossible.

It’s Sunday, so it’s time for another photo of the week and the story behind the image.

I typically avoid carrying any extra equipment when I’m on one of my wildlife photo hikes. My Canon 600mm f/4 super telephoto lens, camera and monopod provide more than enough weight to carry on a four or five mile hike over hills and through fields.

But on this November morning in 2007 I decided to throw one extra lens — a normal to short telephoto zoom — into a light backpack before I left the house.

Bird photography in late spring and summer can provide an observant photographer opportunities for "family" photos.

For instance, tracking a bird carrying a worm or insect can lead to shots of babies being fed in the nest. Or ignoring a parent bird hovering over your head can lead to shots of fledglings testing their independence.

The photos in my featured gallery for August show a variety of fledglings shot in parks in Central Ohio. In some cases - bluebirds and robins, for instance - it is obvious the birds are fledglings from their markings. …